Whenever you go to a big conference, the freebies are always a nice little add-on. Sometimes it’s a sweet keychain or tote bag, or maybe you take home something more luxurious like a t-shirt.

But 10,000 teachers at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference will be getting something much more special — and valuable — next month: A Microsoft Surface tablet.

Yep, that’s right. As part of the Windows in the Classroom Surface Experience Project, the Redmond software giant is getting all Oprah and giving away a bunch of Surface RT tablets to teachers who are registered at ISTE 2013 before June 18.

Teachers who want a Surface can sign up here to receive a gift acknowledgement letter to be signed by a school official. Once teachers pick up their tablet, they’re encouraged to attend Microsoft workshops during the conference.

ISTE, the largest edtech conference in the U.S. and second-largest in the world, takes place later this month from June 23-26.

Taylor Soper is a GeekWire staff reporter who covers a wide variety of tech assignments, including emerging startups in Seattle and Portland, the sharing economy and the intersection of technology and sports. Follow him @taylor_soper and email taylor@geekwire.com.

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Comments

Very nice of MS. As a recipient of a $99 Surface RT at MS Tech Ed, I just wish there were ANY good apps for it. :(

blahism

Lots of good apps on it. Just different names/brands than familiar names to iOS or Android.

Jeremy

Office, Evernote, Onenote, Twitter, Skype Pandora, Lync, SKydrive, Box, Xbox Smartglass, Netflix, ESPN & Kindle to name a few off the top of my head along with a great UI. Yeah – there aren’t “ANY” good apps :- / Good grief.

TeacherA

Let’s give the all obsolete or useless tech to teachers….

Esther M

I dont think so. I got Surface for evaluate it and is really cool! A lot of advantages u can have

vui

Stop this nonsense ms hater. Surface will be the best tool on the planet for teachers because it is a lovely device with MS office. it can do anything an Ipad or others can do and plus more.

EnlightenedSelfInterest

Have you ever used a Surface? My (admittedly subjective) opinion is that my Surface beats my wife’s iPad hands-down. Even my kids would rather play on the Surface.

Andrew

This is a great gesture and a smart way to get this in the hands of people who interact with a younger population. I would imagine most people bashing the device have never used it. It’s one of the few tablets that allows some fun (using the Win 8 view) and work (using the desktop view). Plenty of apps and it doubles as my Kindle with the Kindle app. I was also happy to get it as a gift over Christmas!

They can’t sell them so they are giving them away. After this give away YTD sales of the Surface are at 10,001!

shoran

Has Bill Gates become a conservative. These haters sound like the people who bash Rush Limbaugh. Enough with the venom. I love my surface and am happy MS gave one to my school for me to use in my classroom. My district has 8,000 chromebooks and this seems far more useful. We were contemplating ipads, but the 5.5 mil pricetag (compared to 2.2 for the Chromebooks) was too high for our cash strapped district).. The haters above probably never had to pay for a bunch of iPads. The $199 ticket price is going to help a lot of districts.